Hi Ciprian, OK, I'm by no means a DB guru, so a) take this with a grain of salt and b) feel free to tear it apart if I'm completely wrong! ;]
If in fact your people and city tables aren't going to change very often, then why don't you just go all the way and keep that information somewhere else in your application and write it straight to your travel_expenditures table, e.g.: travel_expenditures ----------------------------------------------- | id | date | people | city | per_diem | ----------------------------------------------- | 1 | 05.08 | John | Glasgow | 1.600 | | 2 | 05.09 | Mary | Madrid | 2.000 | | 3 | 06.12 | John | Madrid | 1.000 | ----------------------------------------------- This way you completely avoid any JOINs. Of course, this only makes sense if your people and cities information is not likely to change much at all... Thursday, April 8, 2004, 3:29:22 AM, you wrote: CT> Hello, CT> I have the following structure: CT> people CT> ------------- CT> | id | name | CT> ------------- CT> | 1 | John | CT> | 2 | Mary | CT> ------------- CT> cities CT> ---------------- CT> | id | city | CT> ---------------- CT> | 1 | Glasgow | CT> | 2 | Madrid | CT> | 3 | Berlin | CT> ---------------- CT> travel_expenditures CT> ----------------------------------------------- CT> | id | date | id_people | id_city | per_diem | CT> ----------------------------------------------- CT> | 1 | 05.08 | 1 | 1 | 1.600 | CT> | 2 | 05.09 | 2 | 3 | 2.000 | CT> | 3 | 06.12 | 1 | 2 | 1.000 | CT> ----------------------------------------------- CT> The `people` and `cities` tables aren't going to be very populated, so a CT> thought to merge them into something like this: CT> central_data CT> ----------------------- CT> | id | name | type | CT> ----------------------- CT> | 1 | John | P | CT> | 2 | Glasgow | C | CT> | 3 | Mary | P | CT> | 4 | Madrid | C | CT> | 5 | Berlin | C | CT> ----------------------- CT> where central_data.type is P for people and C for cities. CT> Do you think it is a good ideea ? CT> -- CT> Best regards, CT> Ciprian Trofin -- Best regards, Carsten R. Dreesbach mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Consultant Systar, Inc. 8000 Westpark Dr Suite 450 McLean, VA 22102 USA Tel: (703) 556-8436 Fax: (703) 556-8430 Cel: (571) 213-7904 -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
